My first day out C+C Please

[KyPink]

Jeff, I too am fairly new that this. That being said I just started using lightroom after spending about 3 years being frustrated by Photoshop. I would highly recommend using lightroom as it is seemingly easier at doing certain things than photoshop. Great pics btw.

 

[Jeff92]

Is there a trial available for lightroom? Photoshop raw editor is really easy to use but once I get into the actual photoshop part, it gets kind of hard. I don't mind using pshop for little edits but some of the larger edits I've done to random Horvath, it starts looking unnatural. Im no good at blending lol. I do have funnow experimenting though. Im not again trying out lightroom. I just don't want to pay 150 bucks for software that is essentially the same.

 

[TCampbell]

Pick up a copy of the book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson. It's a lot more interesting to read, includes videos, and will make sense. While I recommend you DO read the owner's manual for your camera, that's so that you can learn how to operate the camera. It won't teach you much about photography.
It's easier to post feedback on just one image than it is to post feedback on a set of them. When I get multiple images, I'm usually pretty brief.

So here's the brief comments:

#1 Consider what you have in this image: There's a gull in the foreground which is in sharp focus. It seems to be squeaking an protesting so you caught it doing something of interest. There's another gull left and behind, but that gull is not in sharp focus. Two more gulls in the background which have their heads cropped out of the image. Compositionally... think about what you want "in" the image and what you want "out" of the image. The half-birds detract from the image. Ideally you'd pick the "subject" and find a way to isolate it and this will look more interesting than a random grouping.

#2 this one is slightly under-exposed.

#3 On this one, it's not so much that the exposure is off as it is that it's shot with a challenging angle on the light. I might have boosted exposure here. You've got someone wearing a lot of black and the sun is low, left, and a bit behind. That means the right side of their body is in silhouette. A bit of adjustment in photoshop might recover some detail here. There's a technique called "expose to the right" which means that if you learn to read the histogram of an image, you slightly over-expose (so that everything in the histogram is shifted to the right). As long as you don't get part of the image "blown out" from over-exposure (and based on the histogram I can see there's no danger of that.) it gives you more latitude for adjustment and increases your ability to capture detail in the low-lit areas.

Nice composition with him placed in the left third of the frame.

BTW... did you notice his reflection on the water? A broader angle might have allowed you play that reflection to play a stronger role in the image.

The focus is a bit soft in this one. Your shutter speed and f-stop don't seem to be a problem -- so I don't think we can blame it on that. It may be that you didn't get a focus lock on the subject. It may also be the lens (I was never particularly enamored with the performance of my own 55-250mm lens). Still... I think it's your best image in the set from the perspective of subject interest and composition.

Do get a good book on some fundamentals. The one I referenced above is possibly the most recommended book for those who are beginning photography with a DSLR camera.

 

[Jeff92]

Thanks Tcampbell. The thing is, that was the first day out with the camera and I was getting the hang of it. I liked the 3rd picture the most out of all of them, but I noticed after uploading and enlarging it to full size that he was out of focus, bummer. The reason I say it was my first day out is that I wasn't worrying about composition much and more about taking a bunch of shots trying to find out what works in what light. The picture of the guy on the surfboard thing was just kind of by chance, it was one quick shot I took when he wasn't looking. He was coming in from far off the lake and I didn't want to bother him by taking his picture. Now that I think back I should have payed more attention to the composition and not trying to take a bunch of pictures I could pick and choose from later.

Now that you are the 1000th person I have seen suggest that book, Understanding Exposure, I must assume that it is a good read and I will get it soon.

I appreciate the feedback. I didn't put a lot of thought into these pictures, now that I feel I have a better hang of it, I can focus more on getting the right shot and not worry so much about perfect exposure every time. I found myself fiddling with all my settings and seemingly every shot was taken as a sort of test shot to see how it came out. I did try to apply the rule of thirds, but I didn't really think much into the picture as I was going crazy how to get the exposure set. Again, I really appreciate the feedback, it really does help.

 

[Jeff92]

I messed with #3 a bit, I think it looks better now

IMG_0634 by Jeff592, on Flickr

 

[KyPink]

Jeff I downloaded Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.7 - English, French, German and used my buddy's key... it's amazing but this version doesn't recognize my 60D's raw format. There's a free Adobe DNG Converter 6.6. It's actually so easy to edit large amounts of photos and catalog them. I don't know why I wasted so much time fiddling with photoshop elements.